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5 Reasons I Like Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer- the browser everyone loves to hate! Call me a rebel, a trouble maker, or even a fool… but IE is my default browser and I have no plans on changing that. Sure, its had a troubled past but haven’t we all? Remembering the positive contributions to the web and acknowledging excellent support for modern standards like HTML5 and CSS3, it may be time to really reevaluate this browser that isn’t going to go away any time soon.

Why I like Internet Explorer

They’ve had their butt kicked by other browsers and are finally doing something about it
Competition drives innovation. For years IE’s stagnant development, and proprietary technologies pushed this browser to the fringe as new comers like Firefox and Chrome won our hearts by using industry standards. In recent years a huge amount of effort has gone into the balance of legacy support via Document Modes that put new IE into “Old IE” thinking while pushing forward with new ideas, adopting existing standards and reminding us that IE 6 really has died.

IE has contributed to making my career easier and my skills more powerful
As a web developer, I view webpages as DOM elements. The DOM gives me access to every part of the page to manipulate and use as needed. The DOM first appeared in IE and is now the way any web developer works with HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
Speaking of CSS, it’s a bit ironic that this foundation of modern web development was first implemented in IE3. The irony lies in the fact that versions 7,8, and 9 tended to lag behind in modern CSS support while competitors embraced it and eroded IEs market share.
Modern web experiences would not be possible without AJAX. This technology lets a webpage make tiny requests back to the server and then adjusts information on the page as needed (via the DOM) instead of reloading the entire page and all its resources. Guess what – IE5 first showed us this world of possibility that is now everywhere.

IE still contributesPushing image and text rendering onto the GPU allowed a significant speed boost that now the competition is introducing in their own browsers. One of the coolest features in HTML5 is the ability to drag/drop elements. In the past to do this trick cross-browser means a lot of JavaScript and DOM element manipulation. The native support of drag/drop in HTML is based on an API that originated in IE5. This native support has had very few changes made to it compared to that original API.

IE acknowledges that other groups have good ideas tooAdopting support for standards like Google’s SPDY protocol, or WebGL for video rendering, instead of creating their own competing standards is making the web experience from developer to user smoother, more uniform, and more pleasant by not having to ‘shim’ in solutions to create the same experience across browsers.